Searching for Google Chrome can lead to malicious content

Searching for a link to download Google Chrome might result in a malware infection, warns a Websense researcher.

According to him, if a user enters the term “Download Chrome” in Google Search, the 36th result is a compromised website for downloading Chrome plugins.

The domain (chromeplugins.com) has been registered in 2008, indicating that the website – an unofficial Google Chrome plugin forum – is legitimate.

Unfortunately, one (and maybe more) of its pages has been modified by hackers to redirect users to two malicious sites via JavaScript and an iframe. One of the sites is a Google AdSense typo-squatted URL, and the other one – currently not resolving – is located at best-videogames.com.

The users are automatically redirected to the two websites. The researcher doesn’t mentioned what the malicious content they actually host, but it’s most likely ads. However, an easy and fast change by the scammers and they could be serving exploits and compromising the users’ computers without their knowledge.

Legitimate websites compromised by cyber crooks are, unfortunately, an unwelcome reality, and users should always be on the lookout for malicious sites and keep their anti-malware defenses updated.